


Neal is Never Wrong - But one day Jim will Admit It

by Count_B



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: M/M, makeout fic, still self-indulgent but I will call it fic because it's not so dialogue-heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Count_B/pseuds/Count_B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Neal has to know where Jim is. And it's not that he thinks Jim can't handle his liquor. It's just that he always knows where Jim is and now he doesn't and that is not right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neal is Never Wrong - But one day Jim will Admit It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shakespeares_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shakespeares_Girl/gifts).



> I bet you think I wrote this for you. (And if you're Shakespeares_Girl then it's true) Did you know that if you send enough capslocky texts/emails about makeouts, the iphone will autocorrect it to MAKEOUTS every time you type it? FACT. 
> 
> Mine also autocorrects to GRYFFINDOR, SLYTHERIN, AND HUFFLEPUFF. You can tell which Hogwarts houses I discuss, huh?
> 
> What I really want now is great Will does a segment/show on gun control fic, but I figured finishing a WIP was a better idea than starting yet another fic...

Neal lost track of Jim sometime. Sometime between... well, he's pretty sure it was well before the cosmopolitan, so it was probably between his explanation of the Kraken as just as likely as Bigfoot and the appletini. The point is- the point is that Neal has no idea where Jim is and it seems like something he'd usually know so maybe he should rectify that.

And not shut his eyes; Neal suspects that if he shuts his eyes then the world will spin and he likes it not spinning, thank you very much. Earth 2.0, now with spinning, seems like an unnecessary update. Some upgrades are just a bad idea, or are actually downgrades, one day people will realize this. 

Right. He was going to find Jim. Neal carefully doesn't blink as he gets to his feet and scans the room.

"Aha!" he declares, maybe a bit too loud but everyone has been drinking for the past...many hours, many is descriptive enough, so he's not actually drawing attention. It is just as he suspected, Jim is not in the newsroom. Unless he's under a desk. Neal hopes he's not under a desk. They're filthy. He doesn't have a sound theory on where the gum attached to the undersides of furnishings comes from, but one day he intends to find answers. He's never even seen anyone in the office chew gum.

People persist in their non-gum-chewing ways as he makes his way through the building, peering through every glass door and wall that he sees. Neal sees some movement, but it always seems to be people, well, indulging their baser impulses. If any of them are Jim, he probably won't appreciate the interruption.

Eventually Neal exhausts their floor of the building and he has no choice but to move on. Somewhere, somewhere out there is Jim and Neal will not stop until he knows where that is.

He pushes open the door to the staircase and blinks at the bare, utilitarian walls. It never fails, really. Buildings always forget about staircases. They're essential but Neal cannot name a single building where the side staircases are actually decorated, or even painted anything but basic white if they're painted at all.

Now comes the question: would Jim go up or down?

Neal turns carefully and peers up the staircase. It's daunting. Consider him daunted. Down, definitely down.

From just inside the staircase he could still hear the dull roar of party, but within just a few steps and some determined gripping of the railing because it seems really like a good idea, the celebration might as well be in some other building where Neal's not alone.

The building has a lot of stairs. A lot. Neal's starting to feel like he's stationary and the stairs are moving steadily backwards while the walls move just as steadily forward and he can't stop walking because he might be torn in two but he's worried about continuing to walk too and if Jim was here then he'd talk sense until Neal quit feeling this way. Everything quits moving when he stops; it throws him off because he wasn't expecting it any more. Neal takes a couple deep breaths and starts to descend the stairs again. He doesn't feel quite as likely to be flung down the staircase, but it still feels like a foreign, unsafe place that just goes on and on forever.

Eventually, amazingly, the stairs end. They just stop. Neal's never taken them so far before, and has to sit down if he's going to think about how far that means he walked. Around the corner of the last railing, Jim's sitting with his knees up. "Hi," he mumbles blearily with a little wave.

"What are-" Neal drops down next to him, bumping against his shoulder while he settles himself with a groan.

"I just needed some air," Jim informs him.

"In a staircase?" Neal raises an incredulous eyebrow. "You needed stair air?"

"I may have overshot the street level a bit." Jim's expression is sheepish, mirrored by Neal's own sheepish face. "Did you know we have a basement?"

"I do now."

They sit there in silence, Neal no longer sure why it was so pressing he reach Jim. He's already told him the Kraken theory after all, and it's not like there was any breaking news, at least none he was aware of.

Eventually Neal has to break the silence anyway. "You know, right upstairs is a party going on in your honor."

"I think it's more in Mac's honor," Jim corrects him.

Neal shrugs.

The silence resettles for a moment, but now it has been broken once, Neal feels no hesitation about breaking it again. "In your honor or MacKenzie's, you still feel no need to remain at your party? You have been here a year, most people in your position last two months with Will."

"I, ah..." Jim shrugs. "I don't really drink a lot." There's a glass on the floor next to him, black stir stick the only thing left in it. "I kind of- I forgot how it feels to actually drink this much."

Neal pats his shoulder and just leaves his hand there. "It's not so bad."

"You say that," Jim informs him, holding up an unsteady finger. "But I think maybe it is. Maybe it is just that bad. I- All I do is think and I know, I do that anyway, but this is- This is worse."

"Now you're just being ridiculous," Neal chides. "I've never seen you anything but rational and I suspect that no amount of chemical influence can change that."

"You're wrong." Jim answers simply.

"I am not wrong, I'm never wrong." Neal grins. "Remember, I'm the guy that knows everything. Or can find out in a few minutes, at any rate." He wiggles his fingers, which have come in handy time and again with a quick google search for necessary information on a news story.

Jim's eyes latch on his fingers and stay put even after they stop moving. "You're wrong this time," he insists calmly. "Just like you're wrong about Bigfoot."

"Prove it." Neal turns to Jim, certain his challenge will not be beaten.

Shaking his head, Jim tells him, "Fine. Okay, fine, thoughts I have when I'm drunk, thoughts I may have had tonight. Thoughts that are so irrational the only reason I'm even telling you I ever had them is I'm not sober enough to listen to the part of me that knows I shouldn't say anything." He pauses and takes a breath, meeting Neal's eyes. "I may have been thinking that it's been a long time since I kissed anybody, and that I think it could be really nice kissing you. I shouldn't have said that-"

Jim's cut off when Neal leans forward and presses his mouth to Jim's.

Neal pulls back a hair, but really if he's proving a point that may in some way relate to the fact he's spent the past year wanting to do this, he might as well prove it properly. He scrambles onto his knees so he's not bending his neck and kisses Jim again, lips sliding together in a way he never would have expected. Somehow he'd thought Jim's mouth might taste like newsprint, but instead it just tastes like a mouth.

Jim kisses thoroughly. Eyes shut and lips moist and hand pressed to Neal's side, like he wants to pull Neal closer. Later Neal might pull away, might ask if it was all right; for now Jim kissing back is all the confirmation he needs and he shifts again, this time nudging Jim's legs down and straddling him. Jim gasps and Neal touches the tip of his tongue to Jim's upper lip, presses his tongue into Jim's mouth when Jim's fingers curl into his side and settle him more firmly.

Their tongues rub together and Neal cups a hand around the back of Jim's neck because he's not about to stop kissing Jim unless Jim tells him to. With words. Words that are clearly not happening as long as Jim's tongue is working its way into Neal's mouth instead.

It's unheard-of for Jim to devote himself to anything as wholeheartedly as he does news, but Neal thinks maybe he's found another area in which Jim does just that. Jim's other arm comes around him and his hands roam over the top of Neal's clothing, gliding over his ass and up along either side of his spine, trailing along the lines of his ribs. Neal squirms, trying not to feel ticklish at the way it makes his shirt rub against his skin. He sits harder in Jim's lap, not letting himself pull away.

Breathlessly, it's Jim that pulls away enough to breathe, to laugh. "I give, you're always right. I feel like I'm in high school but in some alternate universe where I was one of the kids sneaking off to make out in the stairwells not the guy in the newspaper office fighting with ancient macs to get Pagemaker to work."

"Ah, but if you were in that alternate universe, I would never have gotten the opportunity to do this." Neal leans in and kisses him again, almost chaste compared to their previous kissing.

Jim smiles against his lips. "I still don't believe in Bigfoot. Or the Kraken. Or aliens."

"Oh, you will. One day you will." Neal rubs his thumb across the back of Jim's neck and presses their mouths together again; one victory is more than enough for now.


End file.
